[CHALLENGE] Over 25k Staircases Climbed in October

As you may know already, 2017 is the year I’ve started adding some challenges into my lifestyle. October was all about climbing staircases, the daily target being set at 1.000 staircases.

Though I’ve had some struggles and I haven’t done it every single day, I’m satisfied with my results.

In short, I was expecting to climb 38.000 staircases (in the last 7 days, the challenge was doubled).

But before going on with this challenge, I’d like to mention two things about the last two, from August and September.

In August the challenge was to learn a new foreign language and in September the challenge was to draw a comic book. I forfeited both of them.

Though I forfeited both of them, I’ve learned something new about myself and my limits. I’ll talk more about this in the next article.

Let’s See The Schedule

Days 1-2: 1060 staircases climbed daily

Day 3: break

Days 4-6: 1060 staircases climbed daily

Day 7: break

Days 8-14: 1060 staircases climbed daily

Day 15: break

Days 16-20: 1060 staircases climbed daily

Day 21: break

Day 22: 1060 staircases climbed

Days 23-24: break

Days 25-26: 2120 staircases climbed daily

Day 27: break

Day 28: 1060 staircases climbed

Day 29: break

Day 30: 1060 staircases climbed

Day 31: break

A total of 25.440 staircases climbed.

So, what’s up with all the breaks and why 1060 staircases?

The city that I’m living in (Craiova, Romania) has only two decent spots where you can climb stairs – both of them being located in the city’s natural park. The spot I had picked was 53-staircase long. And I was climbing it 20 times a day (which means 1060 staircases).

When it comes to the breaks I had to take, here’s what happened:

3, 7, 15, 21, 27, 29, and 31: on these days I had to take breaks because I was feeling really tired, especially on the 3rd and 7th days when some muscle soreness happened.

23 and 24: the park was closed because of the bad weather.

The second situation is weird because it was only raining, but the authorities decided to close the park. I found it both stupid and funny but I’m used to weird decisions like this one in my town.

Measurement Unit: Effort vs. Numbers

It’s weird how, after you climb over 50 staircases for 10 times, you start miscounting how many laps you’ve done.

At least, it was weird for me.

When I was doing this challenge, right in the middle of it I had to keep track of a few important things:

My breath;

My footsteps and where I put my foot on the staircase – sometimes it was slippery;

Number of laps;

Other environment elements – like humans, birds, squirrels, and so on.

And there’s a funny thing that was happening.

For example, let’s say that at a certain point a group of birds was flying by and because of that my attention shifted almost entirely to the birds. In that moment, I was losing my breath or I was forgetting the number of laps done until that point.

I was encountering a weird thought and was asking myself if that’s the 4th or the 5th lap.

But because of the previous days’ effort, I knew how the effort of 3, 5 or 10 laps was feeling like.

So, I was using my effort from previous days and how it made me feel to measure how many laps I was doing, instead of just counting them.

What About My Pace?

There are two situations I’d like to talk about.

The first one: 1060 staircases climbed

As I mentioned before, I was doing 20 laps of 53 staircases each. Therefore, my pace looked like this:

53-ascend followed by 3 seconds break than 53-descend followed up by 5 to 10 seconds break and repeating it for the first 5 laps;

At the end of 5 laps, I was taking a 30-second break and then 5 more laps;

At the end of 10 laps, I was taking a 3 to 5 mins break and then do another 10 laps.

The second one: 2120 staircases climbed

I had only two days when I doubled the challenge (therefore the number of laps too – 40 this time) and I had a slightly different pace. It looked like this:

53-ascend followed by 5 seconds break than 53-descend followed up by 10 seconds break and repeating it for the first 10 laps;

At the end of 10 laps, I was taking a 30-second break and then 10 more laps;

At the end of 20 laps, I was taking a 2-3 mins break and then do another 20 laps.

But that’s not all. There’s one more difference between the first and second situation.

On the second situation, the one with 2120 staircases, I knew I had to dose my effort more properly, so I was climbing the stairs a little bit slower.

What’s Next?

November is the month when I’ll try The Pomodoro Technique intensively.

I’ll use the Focus Keeper App and split my work time into chunks of 25 mins. Also, this challenge fits perfectly with the new full-time job I’m starting tomorrow.

If you want to check my whole list of challenges for 2017, click here.

If you’ve found this article helpful, please share it with your friends on social media platforms. As well, if you have any question or thoughts that you want to share with me, please do it in the comments section below.